This invention relates to the manufacture of roof trusses and more particularly, to a process and system for quickly assembling the components of a roof truss on a gentry table or other assembly surface.
An increase in the use of more complex and varied roof constructions has created manufacturing problems and greatly increased production times. Today, a single roof order may require the modeling and manufacture of trusses with many different shapes and dimensions. Complex roof constructions demand stricter tolerances in the positioning of nail plates and webs. In truss construction previous to the invention here, the typical tolerances for nail plate locations were +/-0.4 inches, which are often inadequate for the complex and varied roof designs demanded in modern construction. Consequently, the modeling time has grown in relation to overall production time. In the past, the assembly of one truss including the positioning and pressing of nail plates may typically have required less than ten minutes, but the modeling and the manufacture of the first truss for each complex truss design took many times longer, depending on the number of workers involved.